Two new venture rankings appeared this week that try to provide a more up-to-date measure of the VC world than the annual Midas List from Forbes.

Aileen Lee's Cowboy Ventures topped the VC Portfolio Momentum ranking from San Francisco-based startup and venture research firm Mattermark. It was followed by FundersClub, Collaborative Fund, Union Square Ventures and Lerer Ventures in the top five overall scores.

Few of the top five leaders on either ranking appeared in similar position on the Midas List.

"The Midas List is more a picture of past performance and we are working on a real-time ranking," Mattermark co-founder Daniell Morill told me. "We are showing who may be on the Midas List of the future."

Mattermark's rankings

Mattermark based its report on the average growth scores it assigns to more than 200,000 startups in VC portfolios. These are based on dozens of statistics, including Web traffic, mobile downloads, inbound links and social media.

"We believe this provides an accurate picture of which startups are getting the most traction at any point in time," Morrill said. "We hope to be able to provide a constantly updated, real-time picture of how VC portfolios are tranding."

Morrill said she was surprised to see young firms like Cowboy Ventures and FundersClub atop her overall rankings, as well as to see firms based outside of Silicon valley do as well as they did. But she thinks the really interesting rankings happen in sector and stage breakdowns Mattermark did.

Anand Sanwal of CB Insights told me his ranking is a work in progress that started out with just the 26 VCs who are on the most boards of tech startups that are getting enough traction to be closing in on IPOs.

Two VCs appeared on seven of these "tech IPO pipeline" startups: Ted Schlein of Kleiner Perkins and Ping Li of Accel Partners. But neither of them appeared on the rankings of who has the most influence, reach and connections.

"We are responding to requests from limited partners who want a way to tell if the VC firms they have invested in are having problems," Sanwal said. "They wonder about this when they see partner turnover or problems with big portfolio companies."

Appearing on a number of boards of companies that are closing in on IPOs is significant, he said. "But we also look at quality of exited portfolios and other factors, too."

The Investor Mosaic rankings could appear weekly or monthly in the future. "This was a first attempt with a limited group."

The rankings are broken out according to who wields the most influence, who has the best connections and who has the best network.

An off-beat ranking uses facial recognition analysis of VC smiles to guage who is the happiest.

"We were just doing that one for geeky fun because we had the tool. Who knows? Maybe some of them will have a new picture shot with a better smile."